


How Do I Love Thee?

by Santillatron



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Dubious Period English, Light Angst, Love Poems, M/M, Poetry, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 05:23:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21489052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Santillatron/pseuds/Santillatron
Summary: Aziraphale writes about his love for a certain Demon.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	How Do I Love Thee?

**Author's Note:**

> I've always loved Elizabeth Barret Browning's sonnet (from which I borrowed the title, the first line, and the general idea), and so it's been milling around in my head for a while. I felt like this style fitted Aziraphale more, and so here we go. It's been a while since I've used this style of English so while the original poem is Victorian, I suspect this is creeping into Elizabethan. Timeline wise for the Ineffable Husbands this is pre-1940s church epiphany, but I didn't have a particular point in mind.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.  
I love thee with a light so fierce I fear  
It may obliterate the divine darkness that thou art.   
And yet, thy manner hath a light that should rightfully not be thine.  
I love thee with a fierceness born of battle minded hands,  
That having no more fight, to softness have turned.  
For I cannot fight thee.   
I will not fight thee.  
I love thee with a heart no longer mine  
For it is in thy command ever since thou up upon the parapet crept,   
And uttered precious words of calm to my frightened heart,  
And in doing so, stole it from me.  
I love thee with a danger such that we dare not speak it loud.  
Though if I could but reach across,  
And folding thee into myself preserve us both from horrors both holy and infernal,   
I would do so as surely as mine heart doth weep.   
Oh for a simple touch!  
I love thee with a hunger so primal,  
And yet we are not beings of flesh, but of light and danger,  
Menace and mercy, words and actions and wills.   
I love thee with a softness to meet thine pointed edges.  
The places where thine once-angelic form hath hardened,   
Into wit, and scathing observations.  
I love thee with a pain, an ache, a sorrow,  
For how canst thou love me with a heart so torn from thine chest  
As thine home was cruelly swept from under thee?   
And yet I love thee with a steadiness that will stay in my timid heart forever,  
Never to grace my lips.   
I love thee with time. We have but all eternity and yet  
The moments we can steal to soothe the ache of an eternity alone  
Are never enough.   
I love thee with a slowness of pace that speaks of my adoration  
As a gentle whisper that only thine ears could hear,  
If thou were but to pause a moment and listen.  
For as surely as my heart doth burst with joy upon your presence,   
Thou art too fast for me. 


End file.
